Ukraine updates: Russian strikes on Kharkiv kill 6

Ukraine's presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak clarified comments on Friday that at first seemed to suggest Kyiv planned to stop allowing the transit of Russian oil and gas through Ukraine at the end of the year. 

The initial domestic reports implied that all deliveries might stop, including oil via the Druzhba pipeline. 

But Podolyak later said he was referring to gas deliveries — with the contract for these expiring at the end of 2024 — but not to oil deliveries agreed upon through 2029. 

"Ukraine has fulfilled and will fulfill its contractual obligations in full until the scheduled completion date... because it concerns our bilateral relations with European countries," Podolyak said. 

The head of Ukraine's Naftogaz oil and energy group echoed this sentiment, saying "Ukraine remains a reliable partner for European countries." 

European countries have drastically reduced the amount of Russian oil and gas that they purchase since Russia's 2022 invasion.

But sanctions on Russian oil deliveries intentionally at first focused on those coming by tanker over the sea, and did not include longstanding infrastructure like the Druzhba pipeline, which was built in the Soviet era. 

The southern Druzhba pipeline, which runs through Ukraine, services Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

All three of those countries are landlocked, not rich in natural resources, and have or had deep economic and structural ties to Russia dating back to the Soviet era.

As oil sanctions were being negotiated, they had said it would not be possible for them to do without Russian oil entirely, certainly not in the short term.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Ukraine's Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk on Friday, a presidential decree stated. 

The dismissal was announced a day after the Ukrainian military reported that an F-16 jet crashed and its pilot died while repelling a major Russian strike on Monday. 

"I have decided to replace the commander of the Air Forces ... I am eternally grateful to all our military pilots," Zelenskyy said in his evening address. 

He did not state a reason for the dismissal or mention the F-16, but said that personnel must be protected and that there was a need to strengthen the command level. 

Ukraine's military General Staff said that General Lieutenant Anatoliy Kryvonozhka would temporarily perform the commander's duties until a replacement was appointed.

The crash took place on Monday and the fact than a US-made F-16 was involved was announced on Thursday. 

The military has not provided a reason for the crash other than to say it took place while the plane was approaching a target.

Oleshchuk had previously said that partners from the US were helping to investigate.

The arrival of the first F-16s in Ukraine, around the end of July and beginning of August, was a milestone for the country, after it had appealed for more modern Western aircraft for some time. Most of Ukraine's air force is comprised of Soviet-era warplanes like MiGs.

The governor of Kharkiv oblast in Ukraine, Oleh Syniehubov, said on Friday evening in an update that six people had died following the shelling of the northeastern city of Kharkiv. 

Syniehubov said on the Telegram app that at least 59 people had been injured, nine of them children. 

He said that people were still arriving at hospitals for treatment and that more information would follow.

The EU has agreed to raise the training target for Ukrainian soldiers to 75,000 by the end of 2024, EU top diplomat Josep Borrell said.

He made the comments at a press conference following informal discussions with the bloc's defense ministers.

Borrell said the program was "the most successful training mission that the European Union has ever performed."

Training is currently taking place in Germany and Poland.

Ministers also discussed a plan to run some training operations in Ukraine but did not reach an agreement. Borrell said that training would instead "be as close as possible to Ukraine, but not in Ukrainian territory."

Borrell said the EU has trained 60,000 Ukrainian soldiers so far this year.

A Russian newspaper publisher has been sentenced to eight years in prison after his paper reported on Russia's attacks on civilians in Ukraine, according to local media and rights activists.

The court in the Siberian city of Gorno-Altaysk convicted Sergei Mikhailov, a prominent journalist in the Altai region and publisher of the local newspaper Listok, or "Leaflet" in Russian, of "spreading false information" about the Russian army, the rights group Net Freedoms said.

Under a new law adopted days after Moscow's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it is a criminal offense in Russia to criticize the war. 

Hundreds of Russians, including several journalists, have been prosecuted under the law in a government crackdown of unprecedented scope and severity.

Ukraine has called on Mongolia to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin on an international warrant when he visits the country next week.

Mongolia is a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which issued an arrest warrant for the Russian leader in 2023 accusing him of the war crime of illegally deporting hundreds of children from Ukraine.

Moscow has dismissed the allegation, calling it politically motivated.

The warrant obliges the court's 124 member states, including Mongolia, to arrest Putin if he sets foot on their territory.

"The Ukrainian side hopes that the Government of Mongolia is aware of the fact that Vladimir Putin is a war criminal," Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said. "We call on the Mongolian authorities to execute the binding international arrest warrant."

However, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the threat of arrest.

"We are not worried. We maintain a wonderful dialogue with our friends in Mongolia," he said.

This will be Putin's first trip to an ICC member state since he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Russian strikes have killed at least four people in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, including a young girl in a playground, the city's mayor, Igor Terekhov, said, adding that at least 28 people were wounded in the attacks.

"The occupiers killed a child right on the playground. At least three other people were injured in the area," Terekhov said on social media.

Three other people were killed in a 12-story apartment building which caught fire as a result of the attack, he added.

Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, is about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Russian border and has been repeatedly bombed by Russian forces since they launched their invasion in February 2022.

Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces had captured three more villages in eastern Ukraine, where it is advancing even as Kyiv mounts a major cross-border assault.

In a briefing posted on its Telegram page, the ministry said its forces had seized settlements in Ukraine's Donetsk, Lugansk and Kharkiv regions.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said Ukrainian forces had advanced up to 2 kilometers in their incursion into Russia's western Kursk region over the past 24 hours.

Syrskyi briefed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy via video link and said Ukrainian forces had taken control of 5 square kilometers (2 square miles) of of Russian territory.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, who was taking part in an informal meeting of EU defense ministers, said he had called on EU allies to contribute to an air defense shield over the western regions of Ukraine.

Strengthening Ukraine's air defenses is crucial to protecting civilians and infrastructure, he said in a statement on social media.

Umerov also stressed the importance of increasing investment in Ukraine's defense industry. 

"This will contribute to the joint strengthening of Europe's security and defense capabilities," he said.

Russia fired a wave of attack drones and missiles into Ukraine on Monday and Tuesday, killing at least 11 people and devastating the country's already weakened power grid.

A possible disruption of oil supplies from Russia through Ukraine via the Druzhba pipeline from next year would not be a problem for the Czech Republic, the country's energy security envoy Vaclav Bartuska said.

Bartuska was responding to comments made by Ukrainian presidential aide Mykhailo Podolyak. Podolyak said Ukraine would stop sending Russian oil and gas through its pipelines to the European Union by the end of this year.

According to Bartuska, Ukraine has also warned of a possible halt in the past. "This is not the first time, this time maybe they mean it seriously, we shall see. For the Czech Republic, it is not a problem," he said.

Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are the last countries to receive Russian oil through the Druzhba pipeline. 

The commander of Ukraine's air force said it has shared a preliminary report on Monday's crash of an F-16 jet with U.S. counterparts.

Mykola Oleshchuk said on social media that the United States, where the F-16 is manufactured, is helping with the investigation.

The Ukrainian military said Thursday that the F-16 crashed and its pilot died while approaching a target during a Russian airstrike.

Earlier, a US defense official told Reuters that Monday's crash did not appear to be the result of Russian fire and that possible causes ranging from pilot error to mechanical failure were being investigated.

The arrival of the first F-16 jets was a milestone for Ukraine in the fight against the full-scale invasion by Russia.

Mercenaries from the Russian private military company Bears, which is linked to the Russian Defense Ministry, are leaving the African country of Burkina Faso due to the Ukrainian army's offensive in Russia's Kursk region, the French newspaper Le Monde reported.

According to Le Monde, nearly a hundred mercenaries arrived in Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, in May, presumably to support the local military junta, particularly its leader, Ibrahim Traore. 

The reason for their departure, according to the newspaper, only three months after their arrival, was to take part in the Russian defense effort against the offensive launched by the Ukrainian army in the Kursk region on August 6.

EU defense ministers are meeting in Brussels to discuss the European Union's ongoing operation to train Ukrainian soldiers to defend their country against a full-scale Russian invasion, as well as a plan to move some of the EU training operations inside Ukraine.

Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said the move has to be "a careful decision" and the risks and benefits weighed up by the European Union. "We are open to talk about this," he added. 

His Latvian counterpart, Andris Spruds, stressed the importance of such a plan to be a "collective decision" before the meeting of his EU counterparts. 

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said he was in favour of the idea, but top EU diplomat Josep Borrell said there was no EU agreement currently to train Ukrainian soldiers on Ukrainian soil.

Training is currently taking place in Germany and Poland. The training mission began in November 2022.

So far, 52,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been trained, according to EU figures from May. The EU wants to train another 60,000 Ukrainian soldiers by the end of summer 2024. EU defense ministers are expected to discuss extending the mission until 2026. 

French President Emmanuel Macron, backed by Lithuania, has signaled his support for training Ukrainian soldiers in Ukraine. But a number of EU countries, including Germany, are concerned about the move.

Russian strikes overnight damaged a factory in the northeastern city of Sumy, killing two people and injuring at least eight others, local officials said.

An airstrike caused a fire at the factory, which makes baby food packaging, prompting regional authorities to urge residents to stay inside and close windows.

A drone strike also hit an industrial facility in the eastern city of Poltava, causing no casualties, regional governor Filip Pronin said.

The Ukrainian air force said it shot down 12 of 18 Russian-made drones over five Ukrainian regions overnight. Four other drones fell over Ukrainian territory.

Russia also used an Iskander-M missile in the attack, the air force added.

dh/rc (AP, AFP, dpa, Reuters)